McKenzie Wark on Sat, 9 Feb 2002 23:05:47 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> Vector, Site, Event |
A dialogue on the politics of language in the internet age: KEN: We no longer have roots, we have aerials. FELIX: Over the years, I have read this statement a couple of dozen times KEN: Yes i keep repeating it, hoping to find a reader like you. FELIX: Every time I read it, I wondered, what is this supposed to mean? KEN: That is how an aphorism works. What Karl Kraus called a half truth and a one-and-a-half truth. FELIX: Does it mean "will have aerials" in sense that we are in >the midst of a historical transition whose outcome is already obvious to >the truly seeing eye? KEN: Maybe (think about it) FELIX: Or, does it mean "must have aerials" in the sense that we should go with >the program and adapt as quickly as possible since the world has already >changed but some of us have not yet realized it? KEN: Maybe (think about it) FELIX: Or, is it really "have aerials" in the sense that we went through a >transformation, waking up one morning, not as a giant bug, but as a new >cultural species. The revolution took place over night and the simpletons >slept right through it! KEN: Maybe (think about it) FELIX: I fear it might be all the above. KEN: Why 'fear'? What's wrong with a little semantic instability every now and then? It's where thinking comes from... FELIX: Now I'm getting really lost. KEN: Good. You have to get lost to discover any place new (or anew) FELIX: But I think I'm going down the wrong track here. KEN: No, you were on the right track. Thinking of alternatives, exploring the virtuality that is language. FELIX: In the end, it doesn't really matter what it means. KEN: This makes me sad. Making meaning seems to me the most utopian thing language enables. The people make meaning. FELIX: It's all about branding, the arbitrary connection of a commodity to an >otherwise meaningless signifier for mutual enhancement. KEN: Quite the opposite. Pepsi vigorously police their trademarks. They suppress poetics. What i'm offering is an aphorism, which is the opposite of a slogan, in that reader makes its meanings, not the author. I might like some of what Felix unpacks from it more than other things, but it is not for me to judge. Nor, incidentally, is it all that meaningful for a reader to assign what they find in it to the author. I am author of signifer, not the signified. FELIX: Magic, somewhere, >up there in the air. That's what we need aerials for. I want some too. Can >I have them x-large? KEN: No, not magic at all. Tha romaticises poetics. We need to politicise and democratise language. Anyone can become a reader. It's just a matter of pulling signs free from the author[ities] who claim to police their meaning. CHORUS: We no longer have origins we have terminals. _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net